INDIANAPOLIS – Posters of the Indiana Pacers don’t hang in Gordon Hayward’s bedroom anymore, but it wasn’t his doing. Rik Smits, Dale Davis and his favorite player as boy in Brownsburg, Reggie Miller, would still be on the wall of his childhood home if it were up to him, but it’s not. Hayward’s parents are in the process of selling that four-bedroom brick house, and it was the Realtor who told them: The posters in Gordon’s room have to go. Yes – even Reggie Miller.

“Childhood memories,” Hayward is telling me on Sunday, saying it with a huge smile as he walked toward the court at Bankers Life Fieldhouse to see his family after shooting the Pacers right out of the 2019 NBA playoffs.

Hayward’s smile is about to get bigger. He walks through the tunnel and onto the court, and there they are, two of his three daughters. They’re wearing bunny ears on Easter and playing “Simon Says” on the same floor where their daddy just scored nine of his team-high 20 points in the final 4½ minutes of Game 4. It was Hayward’s late burst that gave the Boston Celtics separation in their 110-106 defeat of the Pacers that finished off their first-round Eastern Conference series.

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Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward (20) slams down two point over Indiana Pacers guard Tyreke Evans (12) in the first half of their game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Sunday, April 21, 2019. (Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)

Their dad was happy to get some big buckets, and he doesn’t care in the least that it came at the expense of the Pacers. An Indiana kid through and through, he grew up on the Pacers at Market Square Arena and Conseco Fieldhouse – he went on to become an Indiana All-Star at Brownsburg, then an All-American for current Celtics coach Brad Stevens at Butler – and he says, yes, his first game here as an NBA player was strange. But that was nine years ago.

“It’s not strange anymore,” he says.

Now a trip to Bankers Life Fieldhouse is a business trip, and Hayward gave the Pacers the business in the fourth quarter. Indiana led for most of the third quarter, but the Celtics had an 87-83 advantage when Hayward heated up. Twice in a row the Celtics’ 6-8 small forward found himself isolated with 6-11 Pacers center Myles Turner, and those two possessions led to six consecutive points: He drove Turner to the rim for a three-point play, then backed up near the midcourt stripe, attacked Turner and pulled up for a 3-pointer.

That made it 93-85, and a few minutes later Hayward was drilling another 3-pointer for a 102-92 lead with 1:03 left to send the crowd to the exits. The Hayward cheering section stayed, many of them people he doesn’t know – “Every time I come back here I have so much support,” Hayward says, “and I really appreciate it” – but also his dad, his wife and kids, and his mom and grandmother in No. 20 Celtics jerseys. Hayward’s high school coach, Josh Kendrick, and Kendrick’s wife were here in Hayward jerseys, too.

Hayward’s dad, also named Gordon, was telling me what it’s like to be named “Gordon Hayward” in this town. Here’s the background for the story he’s about to tell me: He and his wife volunteer in the nursery at Traders Point Christian Church. They wear nametags.

“And this woman said, ‘Oh my gosh, are you Gordon Hayward?’” the elder Hayward says. “And I said, ‘Well, I used to be. Now I’m Gordon Hayward’s father.’”

The younger Hayward, the 6-8 small forward for the Celtics, had quite the day on Sunday, and not all of it good. He was on the receiving end of the dunk heard ‘round the world in the second quarter when Turner faked his defender, Al Horford, into the air at the 3-point arc and drove to the rim. He took off and met Hayward in mid-air, then kept elevating before spiking a ferocious right-handed dunk. Turner was howling as he ran back the court. The crowd was buzzing. The Celtics bench was cringing.

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Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner (33) goes up for a dunk on Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward (20) in the first half of their game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Sunday, April 21, 2019.(Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)

Hayward’s dad was watching.

“I think it fired him up,” the elder Hayward says of his son.

Indeed, Hayward soon attacked Turner at the other end and scored at the rim, then hit a 3-pointer as the Celtics were rallying from a seven-point deficit in the third quarter, then scored those nine points in the final 4½ minutes to seal this victory. The first six came at the expense of Turner.

It was no way to treat his hometown team, but then, Hayward has done this before. Late in the regular season, when the Celtics came to Bankers Life Fieldhouse to play the Pacers essentially for the No. 4 seed – and home-court advantage in this series – it was Hayward who scored 21 points on 9-for-9 shooting in the Celtics’ 117-97 victory. That capped Hayward’s late-season surge as he continues to ascend following that gruesome broken leg he suffered five minutes in his first game with Boston, the 2017-18 season opener, that cost him the final 81 games. Sixty-four games into his comeback 2018-19 season, Hayward was averaging 10.8 points and 4.3 rebounds on 44.8-percent shooting. In his final eight, he averaged 16.4 ppg and six rebounds on 58.5-percent shooting.

“It’s been a long process to get back,” Stevens said after Game 4. “He was big at the end of the game tonight for sure.”

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Boston Celtics forward Gordon Hayward (20) signals a teammate before checking into the game in the first half of their game at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Sunday, April 21, 2019. (Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)

Big against his childhood team, the same team that nearly had the chance to draft him. After his sophomore year at Butler, Hayward entered the 2010 NBA Draft. Indiana had the No. 10 pick that year, and as Hayward sat with his dad in the green room at Madison Square Garden, they saw what was happening: The Pacers were one pick away from being on the clock … when Utah drafted him No. 9. The Pacers chose Paul George.

“We’ll never know,” the elder Hayward says.

No, but we know this: In the offseason after his rookie season, and again after his third year in the league, Hayward returned home, to that cul-de-sac in Brownsburg, and slept under those Pacers posters in his old room. He drove his old Honda Accord. Same old Gordon.

“How many NBA players would do that?” his father was asking me.

I can think of one, and when I find him in the Celtics’ locker room after the game, Hayward is sitting with his ankles in a tub of ice. Boston power forward Al Horford is shouting at him, “We’re gonna party tonight!” Center Aron Baynes is wanting to know how Hayward will celebrate.

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Hayward is smiling ruefully. You’ve seen the smile, probably. It’s the one he gave after learning his third child would be a girl – his third girl – a gender reveal that went viral. This time, in the locker room on Sunday, he’s smiling ruefully again as he ponders how he will celebrate the Celtics’ sweep of the Pacers.

“Oh, I know,” Hayward tells Baynes. “I’ll be with three girls who don’t care that we won.”

Hayward smiles again, and it’s not rueful anymore. Now it’s a big one, almost giddy, the kind a daddy smiles when he thinks of his kids.

And the kind a man smiles after scoring 20 points on the team of his youth. The posters are gone, and so are the Pacers. It was time for Gordon Hayward to put away childish things — and his childhood team.